Dev Update #5: Game Overview
Greeting Adventurers,
It’s been a while since we last spoke to you all. First and foremost, we’d like to once again answer our most commonly asked question: Yes, Project Witchstone is very much still in development!
During our 2 years of almost complete silence, the team at Spearhead Games has been hard at work on the game, making sure you all get to experience a beautiful and groundbreaking cRPG. We decided that now’s a good time to finally show you all some of the progress made on Project Witchstone and some of the innovations we are bringing to the genre. As such, we will be releasing blog posts on a monthly basis.
For the first post of our return, we thought it would be good to remind you what Project Witchstone is all about.
[h2]Origins, Vision and Challenges[/h2]

A key inspiration for Witchstone was the experience of playing a tabletop RPG, where the possibilities of roleplaying characters seem limitless, the feeling that the story is impacted by your decisions and that you have meaningful agency with the game’s world and its characters (at least with a good game master ;) )
While Witchstone has the look and feel of a cRPG, we don’t see it as being a traditional cRPG. Through its underlying combination of narrative, faction and NPC systems, we’re building the game with freedom of choice at its core, where those choices can have meaningful impacts on the game’s world as well as the story of your character. Unlike most RPGs, no quest is mandatory, no character is essential, and no choice is either good or bad.
Whilst this goal will provide an incredible opportunity for players to shape endless new adventures, this also poses some challenges, mostly learned behaviors and expectations from traditional cRPGs.
In more traditional cRPGs you are traveling through predetermined paths. You’re guided on paths through the highs and lows and the story is paced to match it.
We’re trying to break this on-rails, pre-determined experience and enable true freedom: the ability to work towards your chosen goal in any way you see fit. With Witchstone, you can experience your own story and shape the world in your own way but still feel the depth and quality of that journey.

We want everyone’s journey and progress to their goal to be genuinely unique; however, we also need to ensure that the experience doesn’t feel directionless.
The key high-level goals we are striving for are:
Gameplay is never directed
Every playthrough is unique

Please let us know in the comments what excites you the most about Project Witchstone.
And finally, we’d like to thank all of you who have stayed with us these past 2 years, even if we didn’t talk at all about the game. Your continued support and curiosity has meant so much to the team. We promise never to disappear like that again.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WitchstoneGame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WitchstoneGame/
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1064120/Project_Witchstone/
Discord: https://discord.gg/spearheadgames
Talk to you again next month!
-Spearhead Games Team
It’s been a while since we last spoke to you all. First and foremost, we’d like to once again answer our most commonly asked question: Yes, Project Witchstone is very much still in development!
During our 2 years of almost complete silence, the team at Spearhead Games has been hard at work on the game, making sure you all get to experience a beautiful and groundbreaking cRPG. We decided that now’s a good time to finally show you all some of the progress made on Project Witchstone and some of the innovations we are bringing to the genre. As such, we will be releasing blog posts on a monthly basis.
For the first post of our return, we thought it would be good to remind you what Project Witchstone is all about.
[h2]Origins, Vision and Challenges[/h2]

A key inspiration for Witchstone was the experience of playing a tabletop RPG, where the possibilities of roleplaying characters seem limitless, the feeling that the story is impacted by your decisions and that you have meaningful agency with the game’s world and its characters (at least with a good game master ;) )
While Witchstone has the look and feel of a cRPG, we don’t see it as being a traditional cRPG. Through its underlying combination of narrative, faction and NPC systems, we’re building the game with freedom of choice at its core, where those choices can have meaningful impacts on the game’s world as well as the story of your character. Unlike most RPGs, no quest is mandatory, no character is essential, and no choice is either good or bad.
Whilst this goal will provide an incredible opportunity for players to shape endless new adventures, this also poses some challenges, mostly learned behaviors and expectations from traditional cRPGs.
In more traditional cRPGs you are traveling through predetermined paths. You’re guided on paths through the highs and lows and the story is paced to match it.
We’re trying to break this on-rails, pre-determined experience and enable true freedom: the ability to work towards your chosen goal in any way you see fit. With Witchstone, you can experience your own story and shape the world in your own way but still feel the depth and quality of that journey.

We want everyone’s journey and progress to their goal to be genuinely unique; however, we also need to ensure that the experience doesn’t feel directionless.
The key high-level goals we are striving for are:
Gameplay is never directed
- Witchstone is, fundamentally, still an RPG. We need to introduce the various systems including the features, and of course, the content to the player.
- We want the players to have an idea of what’s possible and what next steps they could accomplish towards their goal.
- That said, we also want to avoid leading and hand-holding the player too much and need to challenge some of the players’ learned behavior from playing other RPGs.
Every playthrough is unique
- A different outcome to what the player is expecting shouldn’t be considered a failure. Instead, it should be just another challenge or another way to achieve your chosen goal. This idea should shape the core of the unique, emergent journey each player will experience.

Please let us know in the comments what excites you the most about Project Witchstone.
And finally, we’d like to thank all of you who have stayed with us these past 2 years, even if we didn’t talk at all about the game. Your continued support and curiosity has meant so much to the team. We promise never to disappear like that again.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WitchstoneGame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WitchstoneGame/
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1064120/Project_Witchstone/
Discord: https://discord.gg/spearheadgames
Talk to you again next month!
-Spearhead Games Team